Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Belgium approves four-day week

euronews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 90 posts

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#11

Post by bla3 »

harles wrote: post #6

38 hours (the estimated work week) is exactly half of the 996 week (76 hours) of some companies in China. I don’t think that’s healthy, but if I had to bet, I’d pick the 76 hour workers outcompeting their 38 hour counterparts.

Depends on the type of work, surely. If it's menial tasks and labor is plenty, you can afford your workforce continuously burning out, since it's fast to train and easy to replace. It's exploitative, but as long as it makes the market happy...

For highly-educated jobs where people need 6 months of onboarding and institutional knowledge matters, it's probably more efficient to reduce churn.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#12

Post by wccrawford »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #5
hatchnyc wrote: post #3

It seems that with these types of changes, I mean with more and more of the workforce working on schedules that don’t overlap, it is going to become more and more important for business software to run autonomously without anyone there to babysit it, but it seems to me we have been moving in precisely the opposite direction for some time now. Specifically “doing agile” seems to encourage this, I always see lots of su…

How on earth is this related to "agile" software/product development? > I always see lots of supporting infrastructure being skimped on so a new feature can be delivered faster That's bad management and has nothing to do with agile. Reserve time for bug fixes (or have fire fighting capabilities) and refactoring, include time for tech tickets. ALWAYS. Plan workload jointly with developers, talk to them regularly. It's…

They did put "doing agile" in scare quotes to suggest it isn't really true agile development. They're claiming it, but not actually doing it right.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#14

Post by sAbakumoff »

I recall times when I worked at the office. Friday was a dead day. No one was interested in doing anything but waiting until 5pm. People were wandering around the office like zombies, having endless coffee-breaks and meaningless chats.

I guess that it's quite common situation for office workers, unless they are under strict surveillance and control(f.e. Amazon, EPAM).

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#15

Post by chpatrick »

harles wrote: post #6

38 hours (the estimated work week) is exactly half of the 996 week (76 hours) of some companies in China. I don’t think that’s healthy, but if I had to bet, I’d pick the 76 hour workers outcompeting their 38 hour counterparts.

It really depends on the type of work. You can't pump out creativity and it's actually an advantage to be well-rested.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#17

Post by ThalesX »

krickkrack wrote: post #4
philmcp wrote: post #2

"In practice this means maintaining a 38-hour working week, with an additional day off compensating for longer work days." Unfortunately it's a compressed 4 day week, instead of a "proper" 4 day work week (i.e. 4 x 8 hour days, e.g. https://4dayweek.io ) A step in the right direction however

As an employer there are plenty of jobs that I would be perfectly fine allowing the employee to work 20% less, as long as they cost me 20% less.

Is it really a good use of an agile employer's time to come up with linear compensation schemas for the workers? I would be perfectly fine allowing the employee to use the bathroom given it costs me a couple percentage points less...

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#19

Post by krickkrack »

bloqs wrote: post #9
krickkrack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employer there are plenty of jobs that I would be perfectly fine allowing the employee to work 20% less, as long as they cost me 20% less.

I think you have misunderstood the reason behind the move towards the 4 day workweek across Europe. It's literally more productive for less hours.

If workers were more productive working less hours you wouldn't need the government to do anything - businesses acting in their own interests would do this automatically.

The government doesn't know how to run businesses better than the businesses themselves.

Re: Belgium approves four-day week

#20

Post by IshKebab »

jd115 wrote: post #7
krickkrack wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an employer there are plenty of jobs that I would be perfectly fine allowing the employee to work 20% less, as long as they cost me 20% less.

That's literally missing the entire point of it. You already have this now - always had it. There's nothing new or interesting about what you're "proposing". What IS new and interesting is getting employees who work 20% less, AND THEREFORE are 20% more productive (and presumably 20% happier), at the same cost.

> You already have this now - always had it. There's nothing new or interesting about what you're "proposing".

That's not remotely true. There's a real stigma about part-time work and most employers would just say NEXT! if you said "please can I work 4 days a week for 80% pay?".

Post reply on HN